Chapter 2
Perceptions
Where the characters watch each other
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Mance
The stench coming from the inside of the cottage reminded him strongly of a rotting carcass of a mammoth whom the giants didn't bury yet, mourning the lost animal for several days as was their custom. Mance Rayder pushed away the curtains surrounding a simple septry bed and faced a short, skinny man, laying in his own excrement for what must have been days. His right arm was swollen and he must have been suffering from some kind of wound poisoning.
"Father," said the young woman, her voice ever measured, "the Elder Brother recommended this singer to travel south with us. He has come to talk to you and seek your agreement."
Mance knew that her name was not Alayne, as she had told him, and that the wounded man was not her father.
He regretted not asking Jon Snow for the names of all of his siblings when he was charged to go south and save his little sister. Then again, they were all supposed to be dead, all except Jon, a special child, and the sister Mance had been sent to look for.
The wildling had seen them all, dressed with motherly love, standing proud to meet the king, when he himself posed as a common singer in Winterfell during King Robert's visit. Several long years had passed since then.
Never had he dreamed that he would meet Jon's older sister on his way. And now that he did, he didn't even know her real name.
The stinking man fixated Mance with a malicious regard, and the King-beyond-the-Wall realised that he was expected to speak.
"My lord," he started. That always appeals to the kneelers, he thought, despising the treatment and the people who used it. The expression on the little wounded man's face changed from evil to more neutral, observing, examining, measuring, calculating. Just like myself up to a certain point, Mance thought, amused; an upstart, always on his guard.
"I am good with the lute and with the sword," Mance continued flatly in a most humble attitude he could muster, "I would offer you my services freely in exchange for a small favour from your side."
"What makes you think we have any need of your services?" the small man retorted, his ability to speak apparently unharmed by the great bodily distress he was suffering.
"For one, your sellswords are few, and your daughter especially beautiful," said the King-beyond-the-Wall matter-of-factly. "More hands have more chance to bring you and her safely to the capital."
"And what would you ask in exchange?" asked the overlord of whatever land on the wrong side of the Wall, that Mance couldn't bring himself to care about.
"Nothing much, really. I intend to make some coin in the capital and for that I will present a play, a story about a forbidden romance in the Targaryen family in distant past. Too distant for anyone to remember in great detail, I should add. The monks who will travel with me are to assume some roles. I require a lady to read the part of Jonquil in my story, even if she is not called that way if you see what I mean... To play the role of the lady love."
"No one touches my daughter," the lord of something, who could relinquish all of his lordships and possessions rather soon to death, stressed every single word through gritted teeth.
"The play is quite innocent, I can assure you. The monks would never take part in it if that was not the way of it," said Mance thinking how to secure that particular lie to become a truth before Baelish discovered it. "There are no untoward gestures and the main players will wear traditional masks from where I come from," he added as an improvised afterthought.
"And where is that?"
"Originally from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, but I have lived in White Harbor since I was a boy," Mance lied some more, hoping that not even the aspiring-to-become Lord Paramount of half of Westeros travelled that far. It would not do to admit that the masks came from the free folk beyond the Wall. He took them for safe keeping when he headed south, should all he loved perish, never thinking to make use of them for anything. His horse brought them intact over the muddy waters in the saddle bag, for which he thanked all of the old gods whose existence he doubted and perhaps some of the new.
"I see," said Baelish and started coughing heavily. Mance was grateful that the attack of his discomposure prevented further conversation. He found that he could take only so much of that man after spending barely a few minutes in his company. The southron lord seemed many times worse than the annoying, late Lord of Bones.
"Consider the proposal, my lord," he said on the exit, much less servile and showing a true measure of himself. "It will only remain open for so long. I have haste to reach King's Landing before the rains ruin all the roads."
He let himself out not waiting for the girl. A commotion from under the hill startled him before he could go and look for the Elder Brother. The ugly, orange-haired knight which must have been the good Ser Shadrich was supposedly training a young squire, a child of maybe eleven name days, or more, a weakling, with a wooden sword. The last of the three guards of Baelish and his false daughter, a man grown, but mostly sideways, sat by and watched meekly.
"Turn on your side faster, boy!" Ser Shadrich yelled, "Or you will not live to see the end of your first fight."
The boy's face twitched and he wore an unfocused expression in his eyes. Still he tried hard to attack his opponent, but the freckled ser pivoted faster than one would expect from his countenance, and the boy landed face down in the mud. The fat seated knight laughed merrily, lifting his feet from the ground in excitement.
The huge monk, who saw fit to shower Mance with porridge the day before, came out from nowhere and picked up the wooden stick the boy dropped. With ease unnatural for someone of the holy profession, he made a few steps forward and hit Ser Shadrich over his chest, his back and his belly in a couple of well measured strokes.
Ser Shadrich jumped away in pain, showing with his hands that he would yield.
The boy raised his head from the ground and commented, "Good! Make him fly!"
The monk tossed away the weapon stick, which looked like a toy in his large arms. Not showing any intention to make anyone fly, he scurried down the hill in the direction of the main monk settlement without another word. Mance could see something else clearly at that point. The man was limping. Not much, so it would not hurt the show, he thought, more decided than before to secure the timely change of service of that brother of the Faith in particular.
Passion was needed for the stage, for singers and mummers alike. Mance had it, and he could sniff other people who had it in them to catch the eyes and the hearts of the crowd. He used his own inner flame as a leader and a battle commander when necessary. Yet on the inside, the true bard was never far away, eager to conquer the audience just for the sake of beauty, with the songs worthy to be remembered.
There was also the looming height and the long hair Mance glimpsed under the cowl. The man should have been a bit thinner and less muscular to perfectly fit his role, but a more commanding presence was going to appear way more convincing on the stage than somebody resembling too closely a real historical figure who was to be the main character. Come from songs, to live only in a play, Mance thought with sadness about the long lost lovers of his tale.
There is only one little problem with all this, he pondered, how can we talk the good brother into it if they are not allowed to speak in the first place?
The Gravedigger
The Gravedigger felt better after he hit somebody, a gnat, no doubt, but still a body to punch. He marvelled at what the Quiet Isle had done to him because despite his foul mood the man was still alive.
It was getting later in the afternoon. No one had died that day yet, so he had to pretend to tidy the old graves near the cottage, trying to ignore the decaying odour coming from it and hoping to see her from afar.
He couldn't tell why he was still compelled to look at her. After all, she could never look at him.
The chain of unhealthy thoughts was halted by a vision of the Maiden come true who opened the door amidst the sickening smell on the inside. The Gravedigger suppressed the irrational urge to grab her and run. You are not the saviour of fair maidens, he reminded himself, you are here to dig, so get to it.
She, ever a lady, took a wobbly wooden chair on the outside and sat daintily with a small piece of needlework. Humming, some silly song, no doubt, she made one perfect stitch after another. A Long Night can descend to the world, and whoever is inside, dying, can dye happily for all she cares, or so the Gravedigger thought.
Happy to see a bird, even if she had no wings.
Alayne
It was unseemly but she felt as though she were being watched.
The arrival of the stranger from the North fractured her laboriously crafted inner peace and nearly pierced the well wrought armour of her courtesies. More dangerous than being a hostage, a role she was well trained in, was to have hope that some day it could be different.
Yet she had to have hope.
After all, was she not among the living where so many have died?
They were to travel south anyway and surely if the stranger went with them, it could not hurt. He could only be as bad as her present company. And if the monks truly went with them, her father would not have the opportunity to kiss her when he got better.
She pushed away the thought that her father could die as a dutiful daughter should, making another red stitch in the untainted white tissue. Red like the blood of the earth, she remembered the words of a foreigner. He had seen the weirwoods of the north, she knew, white with red eyes, the bones and the blood of the land in which they grew.
It was not proper at all but she still felt as if she were being watched.
A thump could be heard from beneath the hill and she supposed some brothers of the faith may have been working there. Let them watch, she thought. Maybe monks were not so different from the ordinary men. The thought of a monk kissing her in place of her father was hilarious and almost ruined her next stitch.
She wondered what kind of song the unknown Northman had thought of, about a dragon prince and a wolf girl. He sang at the home of that other girl she was supposed to forget, but he wasn't working for that girl's father, that much was a given. He could not be trusted. She had never heard a song like the one he proposed.
It felt like she were someone else, watching herself, hiding not to be seen. It was so very unladylike to imagine the things that could not be, as if she were not entirely human.
As if she may have been a wolf.
Maybe if she played a part of a wolf girl for the sake of the make-believe, she could forget she was not a wolf any more, but a bird moved from one cage to another.
Whoever had been watching her, had been happy. Their presence was gone. She continued making regular stitches, red on white, slowly, methodically, one after another, with utmost correctness and application. The song she had been humming changed, coloured with the happiness someone else had perceived.
The rain came down heavily before nightfall. When she finally went in to check on her father, she went light on her feet, the song still on her lips.